*Sorry no pics in this post, more of a life update vibe*

The title of this post says it all. I think that quote (which I did not coin and have no clue who did) perfectly describes my life at this very moment. 

To give some backstory, up until a few days ago I was all set and ready to leave for Israel. I was slated to staff Birthright with Ethan on August 15th (whose name you might recognize from my heat stroke in Petra story). For those who don’t know, Birthright is a free 10 day trip to Israel that all Jews can go on once. If you staff it though, you can go unlimited times and extend your free flight to stay in Israel or travel elsewhere after. For the cheap traveler like myself, this free flight was all the motivation I needed to staff and get the heck outta America. 

Ethan and I were stoked to finally leave the country and be able to reunite in Israel where we first met. Then we find out our lovely friend Katie was coincidentally going to be in Israel too. AND to put the cherry on top, Jordan was down to come meet us…thus completing our friend crew reunion. All the stars seemed to be lining up oh so perfectlyyyy. 

I was planning my onwards travel from Israel to Cyrpus, Croatia, Egypt, and who knows where else. I was just going to travel around to a bunch of countries I’ve never been to before…my favorite pass time.

But then life got in the way. That darn life, always ruining everything. Well to call it life is unfair, it was COVID. Excuse my french but F*CK COVID. F*UCKETY F*CK F*CK COVID. 

On August 5th Israel announced that they will be putting in new travel restrictions to those coming in from the United States. Welp. They are enforcing a 7 day hotel quarantine with no exceptions for vaccinated travelers. The restrictions were already quite strict for us as we had to be fully vaccinated, take a PCR test 72 hours before our flight and another once we arrived, and take an antibody blood test. Only once all the results came back were we allowed to leave the airport. 

Birthright was scrambling to try and avoid the quarantine by moving the trip up from the 15th to the 9th. Mind you, this info was sent on the 5th. Obviously nobody could make that work so they decided to go with the quarantine option. Due to the increased trip time from 10 days to 17, Ethan had to cancel 🙁 

Everything just seemed to be falling apart, piece by piece. So after a ton of pro and cons lists, I decided to cancel as well. It seemed so effortless at first but in the end the trip felt forced. I was really sad to let this vision of my immediate future dissipate right in front of me. I was worried I made the wrong decision by canceling and thought about how a 7 day quarantine in the grand scheme of life doesn’t sound that annoying. But Ethan wouldn’t be doing it with me and Israel might go into another lockdown in September from rising Covid cases. So after a bit I realized I made the right choice to cancel. 

Then the next morning, Birthright sends out an email that the entire trip has been officially canceled. Looks like I made the right decision then! So my options were: continue to live at home or go somewhere else. Can ya guess what I chose?!

I booked a cheap flight to Costa Rica that afternoon and said to myself…”When nothing goes right, go left!”. Then I said, “Hey that’s a good title for my next blog post” lol. 

So I leave for New York this Thursday and am visiting my besties in the city before I fly to Costa Rica on Tuesday (I had a flight to NY booked already because I was leaving for Israel out of JFK). I could have refunded my ticket and just left from LA but I still wanted to see my friends so I’m making the most out of a poopy situation. Lemonade out of lemons as they say. 

I can confidently say this solo trip to Costa Rica is the most sudden and unplanned of any of my travels thus far. I have no idea what’s gunna happen or where specifically I’m gunna go…but I’m just sending it! I hope to hit some new countries like Panama, Nicaragua, and Belize afterwards.  

I chose Costa Rica because when I went there earlier this year I only saw a very small part of it while at Dolphin Quest. I normally like taking my time exploring the whole country so now I get that chance! It’s also cheap to fly into and cheaper than most other open countries right now. 

I honestly don’t know what my future holds and there is something so majestically tantalizing about that. When traveling you have to stay fluid and malleable to whatever situation arises. Having a stick up ur booty will only cause you discomfort. Literally and metaphorically. So always remember folks, when nothing goes right, go left! Who knows what the left side has in store for you…